THREATS AND RESPONSES: CAPTIVES

THREATS AND RESPONSES: CAPTIVES; TALES OF DESPAIR FROM GUANTÁNAMO

By CARLOTTA GALL with NEIL A. LEWIS

Published: June 17, 2003

KABUL, Afghanistan, June 16—
Afghans and Pakistanis who were detained for many months by the American military at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba before being released without charges are describing the conditions as so desperate that some captives tried to kill themselves.

According to accounts in the last three months from some of the 32 Afghans and three Pakistanis in the weeks since their release, it was above all the uncertainty of their fate, combined with confinement in very small cells, sometimes only with Arabic speakers, that caused inmates to attempt suicide. One Pakistani interviewed this month said he tried to kill himself four times in 18 months.

An Afghan prisoner who spent 14 months at the camp, at the American naval base at Guantánamo, described in April what he called the uncertainty and fear. ''Some were saying this is a prison for 150 years,'' said Suleiman Shah, 30, a former Taliban fighter from Kandahar Province in southern Afghanistan.

None of those interviewed complained of physical mistreatment. But the men said that for the first few months, they were kept in small wire-mesh cells, about 6 1/2 feet by 8 feet , in blocks of 10 or 20. The cells were covered by a wooden roof, but open at the sides to the elements.

''We slept, ate, prayed and went to the toilet in that small space,'' Mr. Shah said. Each man had two blankets and a prayer mat and slept and ate on the ground, he said.

The prisoners were taken out only once a week for a one-minute shower. ''After four and a half months we complained and people stopped eating, so they said we could shower for five minutes and exercise once a week,'' Mr. Shah said. After that, he said, prisoners got to exercise for 10 minutes a week, walking around the inside of a cage 30 feet long.

In interviews at their homes, weeks after being released, he and the freed Pakistani detainee talked of what they said was the overwhelming feeling of injustice among the approximately 680 men detained indefinitely at Guantánamo Bay.

''I was trying to kill myself,'' said Shah Muhammad, 20, a Pakistani who was captured in northern Afghanistan in November 2001, handed over to American soldiers and flown to Guantánamo in January 2002. ''I tried four times, because I was disgusted with my life.

''It is against Islam to commit suicide,'' he continued, ''but it was very difficult to live there. A lot of people did it. They treated me as guilty, but I was innocent.''

In the 18 months since the detention camp opened, there have been 28 suicide attempts by 18 individuals, with most of those attempts made this year, Capt. Warren Neary, a spokesman at the detention camp, said today. None of the prisoners have killed themselves, but one man has suffered severe brain damage, according to his lawyer.

The prisoners come from more than 40 countries, and include more than 50 Pakistanis, about 150 Saudis and three teenagers under 16, a majority of them captured in Afghanistan, said Dr. Najeef bin Mohamad Ahmed al-Nauimi, a former justice minister in Qatar, who is representing nearly 100 of the detainees.

Dr. Nauimi represents many of the Saudis, and American lawyers represent about 14 prisoners from Kuwait. There are also 83 Yemenis, he said, and a sprinkling of others, including Canadians, Britons, Algerians and Australians, and one Swede.

Since January 2002, at least 32 Afghan prisoners and three Pakistanis have been released from Guantánamo Bay. Five Saudis were recently handed over to the Saudi authorities. Yasser Esam Hamdi, an American-born Saudi, was moved from the camp to a military brig in Norfolk, Va., in April 2002. Captain Neary said 41 people had been released in all, but he could not give a more exact description.

At the same time, the military is preparing to place about 10 of the prisoners before a military tribunal soon, officials said this month.

Mr. Muhammad, who spent 18 months in Cuba before his release, said that ''when they first took us there they would not let us talk, or stand or walk around the cell.

''At the beginning it was very hard to bear,'' he added. ''There was no call to prayer, and there was no shade. In the afternoon the sun came in from the side.''

Under the current routine, a majority of the prisoners remain in their cells but for two 15-minute periods a week, in which they walk around the cage and take a shower. In addition, the call to prayer is played over the prison's loudspeakers five times a day, according to Capt. Youseff Yee, the Muslim chaplain who oversees the religious needs of the Guantánamo prisoners.

Conditions improved after the first few months, and prisoners were moved to newly built cells with running water and a bed, Mr. Shah said. Interrogation was sporadic and it varied in length and intensity. Sometimes they were questioned after 10 days, or 20 days, and then not for several months, prisoners said.

But it was the uncertainty and fear that they would be there forever that drove many of them to despair, prisoners said.

''All of the people were worried about how long we would be there for,'' Mr. Shah said. ''People were becoming mad because they were saying: 'When will they release us? They should take us to the high court.' Many stopped eating.''